1. Field of Invention
This invention relates generally to devices adapted to scoop up and dispose of waste material or poop deposited on a surface by a pet dog or other animal, and more particularly to a poop scooping and packaging assembly which acts to scoop up the poop and place it within a plastic-film bag for disposal.
2. Status of prior Art
A pet dog is said to be housebroken when trained to excretory habits acceptable for indoor living, for the dog is taught to confine these habits to the outdoors. In a rural environment, this presents no problem, for the dog is free to deposit solid waste material or poop in an open field. But in urban and suburban communities, where the deposit of poop on sidewalks or in other public places cannot be tolerated, pet owners are now faced with so-called "pooper scooper" laws. These mandate that those responsible for a dog or other pet animal must promptly remove poop deposited by the pet on a sidewalk or other outdoor site.
Since a violation of these laws may be subject to heavy fines, pet owners seek in various ways to comply therewith without, however, becoming soiled in the process of doing so. The most obvious way of scooping up poop from the sidewalk is to use a conventional dust pan and brush for this purpose, the user, as he advances the dust pan toward the poop, pushing it with the brush into the dust pan as he would dirt. Then the poop must be transferred from the dust pan into a paper or plastic-film bag for disposal. The practical objection to this procedure and the reason it is rarely used is that dust pan and the brush are contaminated by the poop and must therefore be cleaned and sterilized after being put to use.
Another approach is to train the pet dog to deposit poop on a sheet of newspaper placed on the ground by the dog owner who, after a deposit is made, folds the paper into a package for disposal. But this leaves much to be desired; for it is difficult to train a dog to defer depositing poop until the owner has found a convenient place to lay down a sheet of newspaper. Moreover, it is not a pleasant experience for the dog owner to have to fold a newspaper sheet about a poop deposit.
A more commonly used technique is for the dog owner to place one of his hands in a small, plastic-film bag, using the bag as a glove to pick up the poop. The dog owner then pulls the bag off his hand by inverting it, thereby packaging the poop inside the bag so that the poop is bagged and can then be discarded. Apart from the fact that the dog owner is required to handle the poop with his gloved hand--an experience that many find distasteful--is the possibility that the bag may not be properly sealed or that it will rupture in use and thereby soil the handler.
Dog poop is excrement; and while dog owners are generally law-abiding and have no wish to defy "scooper pooper" laws, these laws are nevertheless disobeyed by many dog owners. The reason for this is that the handling of disease-bearing poop is not only a repellent activity, but one in which there is a risk of contamination.
The poop handling technique of greatest prior art interest and one which makes it possible to isolate the handler from the poop and thereby encourage compliance with the "scooper pooper" laws is the technique disclosed in the 1989 patent to Peck, U.S. Pat. No. 4,875,729. This technique makes use of a triangular frame having a handle attached to its apex, the frame being inserted into a small plastic-film bag so that the broad base of a frame is adjacent the closed end of the bag covering the frame.
In use, the bag-covered peck frame is held at an angle to the ground surface on which the poop is deposited, and then advanced to scoop up the poop so that it falls within the confines of the bag-covered frame. The user, with his other hand, then inverts the bag so that the outside of the bag becomes the inside and the poop is then contained therein to provide a disposable package.
The advantage of a peck technique is that the user's hands are isolated from the poop and there is no risk of contamination. The practical drawback of the peck technique is that it is not always effective in scooping up poop. The mass, firmness and configuration of poop depends on the dog and what the dog excretes on a given occasion. It is not always easy, therefore, simply with a forward motion of the bag-covered frame, to scoop up the poop, for there is no force holding the poop in place or pushing it toward the advancing bag-covered frame. In contradistinction, with a conventional dust pan and brush arrangement, the brush functions as a tool that cooperates with the pan to push waste matter into the pan. In the absence of the brush, a forward motion of the pan may only succeed in pushing the waste matter forward.